Chicken thighs and pastrami on the Primo grill

I found a corned beef hunk in the freezer the other day and thought I'd try a "sous vide que" recipe for pastrami that I'd seen awhile back. The corned beef was soaked in water for about 12 hours with a couple water changes to remove some of the salt, and then I vacuum sealed it and threw it in the sous vide for 36 hours at 150*. When it was done, I threw the bag in an ice water bath for about an hour to shock it cold. Then I rubbed on a mix of coarse pepper, paprika, coriander, mustard powder, garlic powder, and onion powder. I put it on the Primo XL at 275* using pecan chips for smoke. It took about 1 hr 20 mins to hit 165*. The recipe called for smoking at 225*, which I think would've built up the darker "bark" that pastrami is known for, but I had other plans with the grill. It was super moist and tender from the SV, so it ought to make some tasty sandwiches.

I had some chicken thighs I [poorly] prepped the night before. Of the four KCBS categories, I'm least experienced with chicken and I think it showed lol. I wasn't real happy with the trim, though after cooking they were shaped better than I expected. Where I really missed the mark was an even application of rub, and then not using the proper tool to "dunk" the thigh in sauce which resulted in the rub being removed from the first few pieces. I didn't have quite enough sauce either, and I ended up thinning it out a bit too much with some water, so I didn't get that nice "sheen" on the outside either. While they didn't look the greatest, they did taste pretty darn good, and I had easy bite-through skin which was the main test of the cook.

The other two aspects can be fixed with some practice. Gonna take a lot more practice on the thighs to be competition ready...oh well. :thumb:

Yeah, I may have had a couple beers and incorrectly thought a slotted spoon would do the trick. :-o The only thing it did was remove my rub. While the latter pieces didn't get their rub removed when dunking, I was still unhappy with the overall evenness of coverage, especially on the edges. I think the skin may have been too dry when I pulled them from the fridge and I had a hard time getting things to stick.

Also, you can see on two of the thighs where I touched my finger on top and pulled the rub right off. It was sticky!

It worked really well...I haven't used my SV since last winter but it does have its place. Another tool in the tool chest!